Monday, April 15, 2002
I'm not really excited about telling you this frankly - but, then again, maybe you were as psycho about trying to get out of school as I was sometimes. There were just days when, well for one reason or another, I just didn't want to go. Which meant, of course, that I had to be sick. Which I wasn't - at least physically. And at our house, being "sick" meant having a fever. Which I didn't. But I thought I could change that. I sat on a radiator. There - I said it. Now, in case you weren't alive during the Ice Age, radiators were these iron structures that sat on the floor and radiated steam heat into the room. And, of course, they became very hot in the process. And, yes, I sat on one. Did I get a fever? No. Did I get blisters where I sit? Yes. Did I need my head examined? You decide.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "Making It Happen, Making It Worse".
Now, that's what happened to me. I tried to make a school absence happen. Instead, I made some pain happen - and I still had to go to school. I wish that was the only time in my life when I tried to make something happen and only made a mess instead. Maybe you know the feeling.
It is, in fact, a mistake repeated all too often, even in the pages of Scripture. And we have a lot to learn from the "make it happen" choice Abram made many years ago. It's recorded in our word for today from the Word of God in Genesis 16, beginning in verse 1. It comes in the context of Abram and his wife Sarai being promised a son in their old age - a promise that was pretty hard to believe for a couple far beyond their childbearing years. It was all part of God's promise that he would raise up a nation through Abram - a man who at the time had no children. Well, they'd been waiting a while, and the son God promised had not come.
So, the Bible says, "Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, 'The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.' Abram agreed to what Sarai said ... He slept with Hagar and she conceived. When she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress." Well, of course that was only the beginning of hostilities. Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Thirteen years later, Isaac, the child God had promised was born to Sarai. And the sons of Sarai - the Jewish people, and the sons of Hagar - the Arabic people - have been fighting it out ever since. Our world is still torn apart by it. The world has paid the price for Abram and Sarai's "make it happen" scheme for 4,000 years.
The story is a mirror for you and me - especially for those of us who have a tendency to be "make it happen" people. You may be there right now - scheming, pushing, manipulating, organizing - doing your best to make sure the "right thing" happens. But when it's not God's time ... when it's not God's way ... when it's not God's will, you're "making it happen" will ultimately make a mess that may take a lifetime - or more - to clean up. Trying to make it happen - romantically, financially, parentally, organizationally, relationally, spiritually - may keep it from ever happening.
Wait for God to do it His way, in His time. Trying to make it happen just makes it worse.